When French Dada artist Marcel Duchamp signed his name on a commercially manufactured bottle-drying rack and entered it in a 1914 Paris exhibition as a piece of sculpture did it become art? When 12th century Chinese scholars rescued eroded limestone boulders from the bottoms of lakes and placed them on pedestals, did the rocks become sculptures, or were the rocks already art when they were still underwater centuries before anyone ever saw them?

Art Without Artists is a show that asks lots of intriguing questions. If someone casually takes a snapshot, and then years later someone else happens to recognize that it is a great photograph, who is the artist—the one who took the picture, or the one who recognized it? Do photographers ever really make works of art, do they just choose them or do they only find them? Can anyone take credit for happy accidents? What about abstract painters?

Combining things like anonymous snapshots, bullet-riddled deer crossing signs, industrial tools that might pass for contemporary masterpieces, and quirky transformational objects that may be natural, found, or completely accidental, Art Without Artists probes whether art exists only in the eye of the beholder or remains forever stranded in some Twilight Zone in-between intention and chance. Equal parts brain-teaser and eye-pleaser, the exhibition rekindles a sense of wonder while you wonder how to make sense of it all. Co-curated by St. Louis graphic designer John Foster and Gregg Museum director Roger Manley.